James Rhodes is a Marvel Comics character created by David Michelinie and Bob Layton first appearing in Iron Man #118 (March, 1979). Stationed in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, then Marinecombat pilot Lt. Col. James Rupert Rhodes first met Iron Man after his helicopter was shot down by Viet Cong rocket fire during one of his tours of duty. Iron Man himself, fresh off escaping his captors with a suit of armor made in a cave, with a box of scraps, encounters Rhodes. Together, they defeat the Viet Cong and fly to safety in a stolen helicopter.

He became Iron Man a couple more times during his time at Tony's new company, Stark Enterprises, but only temporarily. When Stark seemingly dies, Rhodey takes over running Stark Enterprises and becomes Iron Man once again. This time he uses the Variable Threat Response Battle Suit, a silver and black suit with a mix of laser guided munitions, ballistic weaponry, a flame thrower and repulsor and unibeam technology used in other versions of Stark's armor. Designed for all-out warfare, the armor was nicknamed "War Machine". After discovering Tony faked his death, Rhodey quit the company. Tony told Rhodey to keep the "War Machine" armor stating that the armor always belonged to him (with it properly attuned to Rhodey's brain patterns of course). After which, he decided just to call himself War Machine while he wore the armor.

Rhodey and Stark would make-up and break up several more times with the former sometimes going solo or joining a separate cause from the latter. Eventually he would rejoin the West Coast Avengers, this time as himself using the War Machine armor. He would also join the Secret Defenders and Force Works (A reorganizing of the West Coast Avengers). He would also retire, only to join up with The Crew—without Power Armor at his disposal—after his sister was killed by a powerful street gang. Eventually, he returns to superheroics and is currently a member of the Secret Avengers. In 2014 he took up the identity of Iron Patriot, paralleling Iron Man 3.

Tropes associated with War Machine include:

A Friend in Need/Friendship Moment: In Secret Avengers, his military friend Phil Coulson, who's recently been recruited to SHIELD and is working as part of the Secret Avengers asks him to help them, despite what they're doing going beyond what's reasonable or right, citing that Rhodes never let them down when they were in the military. Rhodes replies that this is what he does, and tells Coulson to tell him where they need him.

Ace Pilot: Whether it be a plane, jet, chopper, or a flying suit of armor.

Anti-Hero Substitute: Inverted as Tony wore the prototype of the Variable Threat Response Battle Suit first and that Rhodey wasn't any more Darker and Edgier when he wore the Iron Man suit. Also inverted as Iron Patriot because he's definitely saner and more straight-up hero than his predecessor, Norman Osborn.

Badass Beard: Depending on the artist, he's drawn with one or clean-shaven.

Badass Normal: Like Tony Stark, Rhodey can handle almost any threat until he can suit up.

Black Best Friend: To Tony Stark. To a lesser extent, he's also this to his former West Coast Avengers teammates, especially Hawkeye and Mockingbird. He's notably disgusted by Maria Hill not only not informing the team that Mockingbird was stuck behind enemy territory, but that she also actively hid this fact from them, prompting him to quit the Secret Avengers team.

Canon Immigrant: Not Rhodey himself, but him being Iron Patriot, was introduced in Iron Man 3, and in the comics he inherits the identity from Norman Osborn in 2014, taking up the Iron Patriot armor on behalf of the government.

Costume Copycat: After Rhodey retired from superheroics, the original War Machine armor was found by his old friend Parnell Jacobs. Jacobs used the armor and War Machine name as a criminal mercenary for a while.

Faking the Dead: Prior to his third tenure as Iron Man, Rhodey sacrificed his War Machine armor so that the world would believe he was dead. Now that he was a dead man, he was free to fill in as the new Iron Man without anyone suspecting him.

Five Rounds Rapid: In his origin story, Rhodey's first reaction to a strange metal man lumbering out of the Vietnamese undergrowth was to whip out a rifle and try and shoot it.

Flying Firepower: Flight and "repulsor beams" (name varies), one of the few instances where the same capability allows for both flight and energy blasts. War Machine, like Iron Man, has all this, plus a good old fashioned minigun on the shoulder.

Just a few issues later, Rhodey is going nuts because he's starting to fear that Tony wants the armor back. It doesn't help that Tony's built a prototype suit, though Tony insists it's "therapy". At first, Tony thinks it's simply the suit's interface not being properly synched to Rhodey, but Rhodey's headaches keep coming back, and he finally goes on a rampage. Stark has to suit up in his outmatched prototype to try to calm him down, and manages to use everything he knows about the Iron Man suit to temporarily disable Rhodey's suit. Tony then takes off his suit, telling Rhodey that he doesn't want the job back, and unfreezes Rhodey's suit. Rhodey gets up... and shakes Tony's hand.

Gatling Good: A gatling gun on his armor's left shoulder as a default. When he had the Stanetech Armor he can add more way more.

Guilt Complex: The real cause of Rhodey's headaches when he was Iron Man. He'd enjoyed being a hero and didn't want to lose that, but deep down he felt that he had stolen the identity from Tony and this conflicted with his loyalty to him; the ensuing headaches created a sense of paranoia expressed in rage toward Tony. Once Rhodey demonstrated he was willing to give up being Iron Man, the headaches ceased. Of course, he did have to go on an InterdimensionalVision Quest to learn this about himself.

Hand Blast: Whether it is coming from a repulsor blast from his palms or bullets from the guns on his wrists.

Jet Pack: More like Jet Boots but, thrusters and repulsors of the armor allow him to fly really long distances.

Legacy Character: To Iron Man. Took the War Machine identity some time after Tony resumed the Iron Man role. He is set to take over the identity of Iron Patriot from Norman Osborn in 2014.

Affirmative Action Legacy: During the Secret Wars, Reed Richards got to see the man under the armour while repairing it. Jim asked him if he was surprised that the man under the armour was black; Reed just said that he knew that 'there was a man in there', reacting more along the lines of 'what's race got to do with anything?', being as unconcerned about the race of who was in the armor as he's always been about everyone else.

Man on Fire: After donning the old red-and-gold armor to escape an AIM-infected space station (Iron Man issues 215-216), Rhodey discovers the hard way that the armor's seals have been damaged as he and Tony reenter the atmosphere. Tony has to cradle Rhodey and use his own Silver Centurion suit as a heat shield to keep Rhodey from being killed, and Tony is able to get Rhodey medical attention as soon as they reach civilization. Rhodey managed to recover from his burns, but the incident left him unable to don the armor again for a long time.

More Dakka: War Machine has been adding more and more guns to his armor. For an illustration of the result, check out the picture for the There Is No Kill Like Overkill trope. For a while, Rhodey's armor had the capability to magnetically lock any piece of machinery to itself, meaning he could repurpose any weapon he found from downed enemies or destroyed vehicles. Even at his current, normal weapon loadout, he's more heavily armed than pretty much any Marvel hero.

More Hero Than Thou: At least one issue of Iron Man where Rhodey knocks Tony out and wears the armor himself. Sort of subverted in that when Tony wakes up, he immediately goes out in a spare suit and arrives just in time to save Rhodey's massively outclassed butt.

Bear in mind, Tony had been using remote-control armor because he didn't want Rhodey to have to face down the Mandarin, not to mention Fin Fang Foom and his Makluan dragon buddies; while Rhodey didn't want Tony to get himself killed in battle, since his nervous system was rapidly deteriorating at the time. In the end, the two of them end up working together with the Mandarin to stop the dragons.

Moveset Clone: Tony and Rhodey in the Capcom vs. Whatever video games. (In the sprite-based games, it's not uncommon for War Machine to be a straight recolor of Tony's Modular Armor.)

Walking Armory: War Machine is a Powered Armor version of this trope (as especially seen in the filmversion). Note that the regular Iron Man armor is already stuffed with miniaturized weapons; the War Machine suit is overflowing with them...and some of them are not so miniaturized; the iconic feature of War Machine is a shoulder-mounted Gatling gun. Many versions of the War Machine armor also have a second turret on the other shoulder with a multiple missile launcher on it. The same is also true of his incarnation from Iron Man: Armored Adventures, if not moreso.

Where Da White Women At?: Rhodey has had two important interracial relationships: the first was with Rae LaCoste (which was broken up by his parents), and the second is with Carol Danvers (the current Captain Marvel).

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